A Novel Method for Soft Error Mitigation in FPGA Using Modified Matrix Code

Abstract

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are readily affected by transient faults in the presence of radiation and other environmental hazards compared to application specific integrated circuits. Hence, error mitigation and recovery techniques are necessary to protect the FPGA hardware from soft errors arising from transient faults. In this letter, modified matrix code (MMC) is used for multibit error correction in FPGA-based systems, and dynamic partial reconfiguration is considered to reduce the reconfiguration time. We propose a first of its kind methodology for novel transient fault correction using MMC for FPGAs. To validate the design, the proposed method has been tested on a Kintex FPGA and its performance has been estimated in terms of hardware complexity, power consumption, overhead, and error correction efficiency.